


A Franchise Worth Exploiting

by lirin



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: 1979, Choose Your Own Adventure, Gen, Merchandise, Worldbuilding Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 08:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 5,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: You lead a team at a merchandising company in upstate New York. You have enough budget left for one more chess-related product: what will you make?





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weakinteraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/gifts).



> Not that it affects the plot much, but this is based on the 2009 Royal Albert Hall (Groban/Pascal/Menzel) version.
> 
> This is a choose-your-own-adventure fic. If you're reading online in chaptered view, the choices are hard-coded in: just click the links! If you're reading a download or "entire work" view, you'll have to navigate to the choices yourself. The chapters are titled with the choices your character makes: just scroll and skim for chapter titles, or use table of contents navigation if you're reading the download in a device with that option.

You work at a small merchandising company in upstate New York. Your company focuses on short-run products that capitalize on whatever's currently hot: you recognize a trend, you think of a product, you contract with a factory to manufacture it, and you hope to complete the process and have your product on shelves before consumers have moved on to the next big thing.

Currently, chess is trendy. The World Chess Championship is coming up in a few months, and it's looking like the challenger for the title will most likely be a Russian. Since the current world champion is American, this is setting up a battle of East versus West that is sure to draw eyes from all over, even from people who don't know their bishops from their rooks. It's the sort of situation that your company thrives on.

Seeing the potential, you campaigned hard to have your team be the one assigned to work on chess merchandise. Your boss agreed, and so now your team possesses a decent budget and a company-wide monopoly on chess-related ideas, while your rival Jamie is stuck with tie-ins for the Pope's upcoming visit...and a budget that is admittedly even bigger than yours. Well, the Pope may actually be coming to the States while the World Chess Championship is all the way over in Italy, but you have a good feeling about this. You've never played chess beyond a few games with your grandpa when you were in grade school, but you've always thought it was kind of cool. Surely there's enough United States consumers who share your views that you can make a healthy profit?

Over the following weeks, you meet with your team and sketch out a few plans—underwear sets with chess pieces on them, sandwich cookies where one of the cookies is chocolate and the other is vanilla. (Can the factory make the filling checkered? You ask Cynthia to make inquiries.) Satisfied with these ideas, you sign off on both and assign members of your team to liaise with the factories and make further arrangements.

Once they get the preliminary numbers back to you from the factories, you take a good look at your budget. You have enough left for just one more project. You'd better make it a good one; you'd hate for Jamie's Pope products to show you up at the first quarter meeting. You call your team together. "This is it, you guys," you say. "One last idea, and then we're all done with chess."

"It'll be nice to get some color back in here," Gail says. "Black and white is okay in moderation, but it's getting a little old."

Maybe you did go a bit overboard on the chess posters, but hey, it's important to have your team in the right mindset. "Well, when this meeting is over, you can take them all down," you tell her. "Now I'm sure you all have been thinking about this a lot over the last week—hit me with your best shot."

"Candy," Roger says immediately. "Food always goes over well. I'm thinking black and white circular candies, like M&M's but different enough that we don't need to license them, and then maybe toss in some marshmallow chess pieces. Like Lucky Charms, but it's all candy instead of cereal."

"I'm not sure how good chocolate and marshmallows would taste together," you say, "but it would certainly have visual appeal. And it would pull in the kids, too, which is a market we haven't done enough with lately." You write CANDY down on your legal pad, and turn to Gail. "What about you, any thoughts?"

"T-shirts," she says. "Yes, I know we already did undershirts, but t-shirts are a different market, one that people will actually see their fellow consumers wearing. We'll do a simple, timeless design, that doesn't tie into this year's chess championship specifically, but just generally evokes the spirit of chess. I've sketched out a few ideas here, but of course we'd want to hand it over to the company artists for their input."

You glance over her sketches approvingly and nod in approval; Gail's a good artist. "Bob?" you say, as you write T-SHIRTS on your legal pad.

"How about a board game?" Bob says.

"Bob, chess _is_  a board game," Roger points out.

"Yes, but this would be a children's board game where you just move pawns along a path," Bob says. "Like Candy Land or Sorry. But we'll make it chess-themed, so the pawns that you move will be shaped like different chess pieces. Maybe they'll even have different ways they can move," he continues, warming to his subject, "that are inspired by the actual chess pieces, and then we can say it's an educational game, that teaches kids how real chess works!"

BOARD GAME, you write. "That might work," you say. It doesn't sound particularly educational to you, but whether parents buy something is based more on how educational the advertisements make it look than on how educational it actually is.

Cynthia is the last person at the table, and she's been waiting impatiently to speak. Just a raised eyebrow from you, and she's off to the races. "I've been thinking about this for a while," she says, "and personally I think the silhouettes of the chess pieces are much more iconic than anything checkered. After all, a checkered board isn't even unique to chess—it's much more closely associated with checkers, what with the name and all. And there isn't a world checkers championship, now is there?" She chuckles at her own joke.

Actually, you're pretty sure that there is, but you don't want to derail the meeting over trivialities. "We've already put chess pieces on products," you say, "particularly the underwear set. Do you have any products you have in mind to put chess pieces on, or are you just making a general observation?"

"I was getting to that," Cynthia says. "Coasters."

"Coaster?"

"Yeah," she says. "I know they're kind of boring, but everybody needs them. Well, everybody except for the philistines who put their drinks directly on the table, and who wants to have to think about them?"

"Um, _I_  put my drink directly on the table," Roger says.

Cynthia sniffs. "Case in point. I was thinking wood or marble: something classy that we can put a substantial markup on."

Substantial markups are always good. COASTERS, you write on the list underneath BOARD GAME. You tap your pen thoughtfully on the legal pad a few times. "Well, that about does it," you say. "Does anyone have any final input before I make a decision on this?" They all shake their heads. "Well then," you say, "Gail, go ahead and find something more colorful to decorate with for the next few months. I'm hoping our success with chess will win us the Winter Olympics assignment, and once we get that, it's back to all-white decorations again."

You head back to your office with your legal pad, leaving the team debating the relative merits of seasonal decorations versus photos of nature. (You don't really care; frankly, you've been enjoying the black and white.) You close the door, set the legal pad on your desk, and stare at it. You don't have enough budget to choose more than one idea, so which one will you move ahead on?

[CANDY](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994385)

[T-SHIRTS](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994460)

[BOARD GAME](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994511)

[COASTERS](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994559)


	2. Candy

You move ahead with Roger's candy idea. You're even able to arrange for your candy-covered definitely-not-M&M's chocolates to be made in one of M&M's own factories; they aren't running to capacity on M&M's and are excited to pick up an extra project. You eventually decide that the chess pieces will be made out of marshmallow after all, but covered in the same candy coating as the chocolate rounds. You hope that will make the flavors fit together better—but then how it looks on the shelf is more important that how it tastes after you've made the sale, and you have to say, this looks good.

It's taken several rounds of prototyping to get to this point—longer than you would have liked, but you're pretty sure the finished product is worth it. You talk to your contact at the factory about how your candy must be on shelves before the World Chess Championship opens in Merano, and he assures you that they'll be ready with time to spare. He calls you to check in every week or so, but then one week you don't hear from him. You wait a few days, in case he's busy, then you call to check in.

"One of the machines broke," he says curtly. "We're fixing it as fast as we can." Then he hangs up on you!

This is your big project. If it doesn't hit the shelves by the time Merano hits the news, everything will be lost. The Olympics project will be sure to be given to Jamie's team. You stare at the phone in your hand for a minute, then hit redial.

This time, he doesn't even pick up.

Sure, machines can break, but you're suspicious. There are other companies out there that are trying to capitalize on the chess craze, and there are other companies out there that are trying to sell candy. Any of them could have had an interest in your failure. Had one of them bribed the factory to delay your candy?

Over the next few weeks, your suspicions harden into certainties. Your candy finally hits the shelves a few weeks late—the day after Sergievsky wins the tournament. His defection makes the headlines, and you hope it will cause enough continued interest in chess for your candy to sell, but there's too much candy and not enough interest. Most of it ends up clearanced in a hurry, as stores clear their candy shelves to make room for pastel Easter goodies.

You don't hang your head as you walk into the first quarter retrospective meeting because you know Jamie and your boss are watching; but inside, you're on the verge of tears. This project was a complete failure. And it wasn't your fault, either! Those people at the factory weren't trustworthy.

Do you tell your boss your suspicions that the breakdown at the factory was engineered by competitors?

[YES](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994427)

[NO](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994448)


	3. Candy - Yes

You tell your boss everything: how they dragged out the prototyping stage with unsatisfactory candy, how when that wasn't enough they claimed a machine was broken. "But did we ever see the broken machine?" you yell. "No, I tell you—no, we did not! It was probably cranking out knock-off M&M's the whole time, and we didn't suspect a thing! And then he hung up on me, and ignored my calls. Can you believe it? Utter perfidy."

Your boss and Jamie are shaking their heads sadly. Sure, it's sad, to know that such perfidy exists in the world as that shown by the staff at the M&M's factory. "Not everybody can handle the strain," Jamie murmurs sympathetically, taking a bite of prototype Popewich. (Kielbasa, sauerkraut, and Swiss—tasty, but you're still not convinced that it's Pope-specific enough to sell.)

"I'm afraid that's the case here," your boss says. "I don't have time for missed deadlines and conspiracy theories," he tells you. "Chess is all washed up now, anyway. Trumper and Sergievsky are out of the headlines, and you're out of a job. Clear out your desk and get out; Jamie will take over your team."

"And sell Popewiches?" you yell. "Really? You're pinning your hopes on Popewiches and candy crucifixes?"

"Candy crucifixes," Jamie says. "You know, I hadn't thought of that."

Your boss shakes his head as he pushes you out the door. "Too sacrilegious," he says. The door shuts behind you, and you hear nothing more. In fact, all you can hear is a buzzing in your ears as the shock hits you. So many years of service, and now you've just been fired without even a "thank you" or a "good luck". Blinking back tears, you go to break the news to your team.

THE END


	4. Candy - No

You sit calmly at the table as your boss yells at you. You apologize profusely and assure him it won't happen again. Next time, you'll visit the factory yourself, you won't let unanswered phone calls stop you, in fact, neither hell nor high water shall—

"That's great," your boss says. "In fact, you can get on that right away. I think this Pope thing is going to be big, so I'm expanding Jamie's team to include all of your former team. Chess is done. You're on Pope duty now. And you can start with candy-covered chocolate Popemobiles."

"Chocolate...Popemobiles?" you repeat.

"I think they have real promise," Jamie says. "Enough of a Pope tie-in to get everybody interested, without any risk of offending people with sacred imagery that might get desecrated as it's eaten. You know, like, how kids always eat the ears off the Easter bunnies first?"

"I always ate my Easter bunny from bottom to top," you snap, more out of habit of disagreeing with Jamie than because you actually care about Easter bunny ears.

"Anyway," Jamie says, "get over to that factory, make sure their machines are in working order, and get our Popemobiles running!"

Your boss nods, and so you pick up your legal pad and leave the room. You break the news to your team, ignore Cynthia's questions about whether seating assignments are going to be changed now that the teams have been combined—"I won't have to work in the same room as Patrick, will I? He clips his fingernails at his desk! I can't work in that sort of environment!"—and head off to the chocolate factory with Gail in tow. You don't call ahead; you don't think they deserve advance warning. And the suggestion you make to Gail, about causing a distraction so you can look around their office? Well, it's just an idea that popped into your head, and you don't think it will lead to anything, but it can't hurt...

Gail may be a quiet self-effacing worker normally, but she's sure good at making a scene when she wants to. You admire the cacophony for a minute—she barely spilled any chocolate on herself, but to hear her scream, you'd think she fell in one of the vats—then you duck into the office to search.

You're not even sure what you're searching for until you find it. An unlabeled leather-backed notebook, like something straight out of a spy movie. You flip through a few pages, enough to be sure you've found what you think you've found, then slip it into your pocket.

You mail it to your company's office in a plain manila envelope with no return address, so that they have plausible deniability, but you make sure to drop a few hints to your boss about 'checking his mail' so that he knows you had something to do with it. With solid proof in front of them that the 'broken machine' was all a sham, your company feels confident enough to sue the M&M's factory. Of course, the factory suspects you had something to do with the notebook going missing, but they can't prove a thing. They settle out of court for the amount your company puts forth as the predicted profit of the candy. In reality, the candy probably would have gone on clearance sooner than the predictions state, what with Easter and all, but if the factory's lawyers haven't thought of that, your company doesn't feel any need to remind them of it. The day the settlement goes through, your boss buys pizza for everyone in the company, and your paycheck for that pay period has a healthy bonus added on to it.

Unsurprisingly—considering they're being made at a factory that doesn't like your company very much—the chocolate Popemobiles turn out horrible. They're barely recognizable as a vehicle, much less as a specially-modified Jeep. Jamie still goes ahead with placing them in stores, but neither of you expect them to sell well.

Your boss doesn't, either. At the second quarter retrospective meeting, he assigns you your own team again—most of the same people as before, but Roger has asked to stay on Jamie's team, so you get Patrick instead. You're already brainstorming how best to convince Cynthia that working with Patrick won't be so bad (Steal his nail clippers? Does the Pope use nail clippers? Why hadn't you ever considered chess-themed nail clippers? Maybe with a queen or king engraved on the handle—on the other hand, if he keeps the nail clippers, at least Cynthia won't have to go looking for something else to complain about...) when your boss drops his second piece of news. He wants your new team to start working on merchandise ideas for next year's Winter Olympics.

Smiling, you accept. You don't even spare a glance at Jamie on the way out.

THE END


	5. T-Shirts

You tell Gail to hand her sketches over to the art department. A few days later, an artist meets with your team to show you some of their own sketches, inspired by Gail's. You pick your favorites with input from the team, then sit back and wait for the artists to work their magic.

The finished artwork looks great! You're glad you went ahead with Gail's idea. And it's been much easier to bring to fruition than most of the other ideas would have been; your company has made t-shirts so many times before that they already have all the connections. You send your t-shirt order over to the usual printing company. (By working through lunch on the day you get the art back, you even manage to get the order in ahead of Jamie's Pope silhouette t-shirts. It's only fair; the Pope won't be here for months, and the World Chess Competition is right around the corner.)

A few weeks later, boxes and boxes of t-shirts are delivered, and it's time to contact distributors and get these shirts put in stores.

That's when you find out that four or five other companies have also made chess-themed t-shirts. Some of the stores are already full up on chess-related products; others are willing to consider your shirts, but only if you cut your asking price. You finally manage to arrange buyers for half of the t-shirts, but the rest sit in the corner of a spare office, taunting you. Every week, and more often when you have the spare time, you call all of your best contacts, but none of them want chess t-shirts.

The championship ends. You keep calling your contacts, but nobody cares about chess anymore. Finally, partway through summer, one of your contacts says they know someone who will buy the remaining t-shirts off of you, but at less than half of what you paid for them. It's not a great deal, but at least you'd get something for them rather than the nothing you've currently got.

Do you sell your remaining stock of t-shirts at a loss?

[YES](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994472)

[NO](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994484)


	6. T-Shirts - Yes

You sell your shirts to some freelancer, and good riddance. You report on the deal to your boss—he's disappointed that the shirts ended up being a net loss, but he understands that this is the way things go sometimes. And then you put the shirts out of your mind, never to have to think about them again.

Never, that is, until the following March, during the next World Chess Championship, when Freddie Trumper wears one of your t-shirts on Global Television.

You go to the department store later, and there it is: your t-shirt, sold to them by another company. There's only XS and XL sizes left, too—it's been popular.

You glare at the offending stack of shirts. Your only consolation is that Trumper doesn't come cheap. You hope that, whoever owns these shirts (how many hands have they passed through since you sold them to that freelancer, anyway?), they spent most of the money they're going to make in profit on bribing Trumper to wear one.

You also hope that your boss never finds out what happened to the t-shirts. He'd blow a gasket.

THE END


	7. T-Shirts - No

You turn down the deal, and keep bugging your contacts until they start hanging up as soon as they hear your voice. You turn down another deal that winter, for only a quarter of what your company paid for the shirts. March is coming round again, and with it another World Chess Championship. Maybe you can make back some of your losses.

You never get the chance. At the look-back meeting in December, Jamie reports triumphantly on the success of the Pope silhouette t-shirts, not to mention the commemorative rosaries and the Popewiches (Kielbasa, sauerkraut, and provolone—you've never been entirely sure that they have enough of a tie-in to the Pope, but you've been enjoying whenever leftovers turn up in the lunchroom). In comparison, you have little to show for yourself.

Your boss asks you to stay after. He waits until everyone's left to break the news, but from the sympathetic glances everyone sends you as they file out, they've all already guessed. He murmurs a few platitudes about how much he's liked having you working for him, but finally gets to the point: "We're going to have to let you go."

"The next World Chess Championship is coming up in March," you say. "I can turn things around. I've got some new ideas—"

"I'm sorry," he says, and shakes your hand. "Oh, by the way—I have a parting gift for you. One last bonus."

You wonder how much he's got in mind. A grand or two would make a big difference for you as you look for a new job.

"Those chess t-shirts aren't doing me any good sitting in the corner, and besides, I need that office back," he says. "You can have 'em."

Your first impulse is to refuse. But hey, those shirts are still worth something. You nod, and promise to come back this evening to retrieve the boxes of shirts once you've borrowed your brother-in-law's truck.

One last handshake, and you're out the door. You don't bother to tell your team; they must all know what's happened, and it would be too humiliating to have to walk all the way across the building and out again in front of everybody. There's nothing in your desk that you would miss, and so you walk right out the front door, slamming it behind you.

You wonder if the clientele of the local swap meet are interested in chess-themed t-shirts. Guess it's time to find out.

THE END


	8. Board Game

You have Bob write up a précis of his board game ideas, and you send it off to the same designer your company worked with for "Robots in Space: The Board Game" (any similarity to hit summer movies from year-before-last strictly "unintentional"). There's no time to waste, so without waiting for the designer to start working, you go ahead and place an order for chess pieces. You send a memo to the designer, letting him know what pieces he'll have to work with. If he wanted to use whatever pieces he wanted, then he could just be a freelancer scrabbling for sales. If he wants the sort of pay your company provides, then he'll just have to work within the confines of the job requirements, and this time, that means one (1) rook, one (1) queen, one (1) king, one (1) knight, one (1) bishop, and two (2) pawns per player.

As soon as the designer has a workable game, you send it over to graphic design to have them clean up the look and order the game boards and boxes. While they're doing that, the designer has another week or two to playtest and balance the game. The finished rules don't involve much actual chess content beyond "kings and pawns only move one square at a time, while other pieces can move several squares", but you're sure the copywriters can spin that into something to brag about.

For something that was thrown together so quickly, the finished product looks great. The graphics people caught to a nicety the balance between advertising educational value to the parents and advertising "FUN!!" to the kids. And you have contracts at several major stores, so you're sure it will do well.

And indeed it does! The game hits the shelves a week before the opening ceremony in Merano, and as the gripping struggle between Sergievsky and Trumper hits the headlines, several stores do special endcap displays that include your game.

Sales slow down once chess disappears from the papers, only a few days after Sergievsky's victory; but there continues to be a steady trickle of sales throughout the following months. Probably parents seeing the educational claims, and not wanting the next generation to be shown up by the Reds. Well, you hope they won't be too disappointed when their kids struggle to make the jump from moving pieces around a track to moving them strategically among sixty-four squares.

As it gets later in the year, you have to decide whether to order a second print run, or leave it be. Another print run would cost quite a bit, but you could market the game as an educational gift at Christmastime and then put the remainder on shelves in March when the next chess championship comes around. The 1980 championship seems unlikely to be an American-versus-Soviet face off like last year (with all the headline-capturing allure that brings), but the defector Sergievsky will be defending his title, so there will be at least something interesting for the headlines. But will that cause sufficient interest for a second print run to make back the investment?

Do you order a second print run?

[YES](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994532)

[NO](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994547)


	9. Board Game - Yes

You order a second print run; you hope that half of it will sell at Christmas, and most of the rest in March, with some stock remaining for the rest of the year. But it doesn't work that way—

Stores start requesting additional shipments halfway through December. By Christmas Eve, you've shipped every last bit of stock.

Huh. Apparently parents are even more worried about showing up the Commies than you realized. You hope they don't start calling for refunds when they realize the only thing the game teaches you about chess is the shapes of the pieces and that they move differently.

But meanwhile, you've got planning to do for the World Chess Championship in March. You now have one less marketing tie-in ready for that than you expected...or should you order a third print run?

Might as well ask your boss: let him feel like he's having some input, and make sure he knows how well you're performing. You head off to give him the good news in person.

THE END


	10. Board Game - No

You decide not to order another print run. You ship your remaining stock off to stores, then put it out of your mind as you turn your thoughts to projects for the upcoming World Chess Championship. Too bad your company isn't the kind of megabucks operation that can send employees internationally on a whim—you know nothing about Thailand, and you'd love to convince your boss that you need hands-on experience to really be able to brainstorm tie-ins effectively.

You only get a couple days off before Christmas, so you squeeze all your Christmas shopping in on the 23rd. As you browse the games section at Sears, hoping to find something your nephew might like (requirement #1: educational value isn't mentioned _anywhere_ on the box), you realize your game isn't anywhere to be seen. Oh, there it is: an empty space on the shelf, with a "Chess: The New Game for Beginners" label. They must not have gotten around to restocking it.

"Excuse me, ma'am," you say, flagging down a harried-looking salesclerk. "Do you have any more of this in the back?"

"The new chess game?" she asks. "No, we sold out of that two weeks ago. We have regular chess, though. It's right over here."

It's been sold out for two weeks?! You should have ordered that second print run after all. "I'm afraid that won't do, but thank you," you say, and wander off to the toy section. Maybe your nephew would like some Star Wars stuff.

THE END


	11. Coasters

Cynthia already has a whole plan in mind, with potential designs and a few leads on manufacturers. You put her in charge of finding a manufacturer, liaising with them, and getting prototypes produced.

The turnaround time on the prototypes is satisfactory, and you don't have any changes to suggest. The final design of the coasters is wood with a contrast inlay in the shape of a chess piece: half of each set will be purpleheart with a maple inlay, and the other half maple with a purpleheart inlay. Right now, you're holding one of each in your hands, and they're both gorgeous. After so many rushed-to-production low-quality products, this is something you can be unreservedly proud of—and set a healthy price on, of course.

"My contact tells me they're ready to make as many of these as you want...well, within reason, but they can make quite a lot," Cathy says. "Just say the word."

The manufacturer is in Lewiston...or was it Youngstown? Either way, it's a manufacturer you've never heard of in a town you've never been to, but they sure do great work. Do you give Cynthia the go ahead, or do you take the time to visit the manufacturer first?

[GO AHEAD](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994574)

[VISIT THE MANUFACTURER](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18178208/chapters/42994592)


	12. Coasters - Go Ahead

You're in a hurry, and you trust Cynthia's judgment. You tell her to go ahead and order a production run of a couple thousand coasters.

The coasters don't all arrive by the projected completion date, but then that's hardly unexpected; frankly, you're usually more surprised at the times when your suppliers actually complete all of their work by the deadline. And the manufacturer does provide a shipment of about half the requested number at the original deadline, so you go ahead on having those sent to stores. You aren't too worried as you wait for the other half, and sure enough they eventually show up a couple weeks later—still early enough that your shipments will arrive in stores by the start of the chess championship, though they might not quite make it onto the shelves until a couple days in.

The initial investment was considerable—good wood isn't cheap, and neither is good craftsmanship. But even at that substantial markup that you and Cynthia had discussed, the coasters still sell very well. Your boss commends you on a marked profit for the quarter, and asks you to work on the coveted Winter Olympics project. Excited, you start brainstorming ideas. Maybe you'll even get the same manufacturer to make Olympics-themed coasters!

THE END


	13. Coasters - Visit

You ask Cynthia to make arrangements for you to visit the manufacturer and see their production line for yourself. She doesn't seem thrilled, but she agrees.

She tells you she'll meet you there, at the manufacturer's location in Lewiston. The morning of your meeting, you go into the office for an hour to touch base with your boss and the rest of your team, then you head downstairs to drive the few hours to Lewiston. At the last minute, you ask Roger to accompany you. It will be nice to have someone to chat with on the drive, and it would be good for someone else on your team to have interacted with the manufacturer, in case Cynthia ever has to go out sick or anything.

"You're sure this is the right place?" Roger asks when you park at 121 Second Street. It's just a house, not a manufacturing plant.

You grab the maps out of Roger's hand and start flipping through them, when Cynthia comes around the side of the house out of the backyard. "Hi!" she calls. "Oh, hi Roger, I didn't know you were coming."

"Yeah, it was a last-minute decision," you say. "Where's the manufacturing plant?"

"Oh, he just works out of a shed in the backyard," Cynthia says. "Come on, I'll show you."

It turns out that this is a one-man operation. The man himself, Dex Kaplan, is certainly handy with a scroll saw and wood glue (he lets you watch as he makes another couple of coasters), but you're a bit unsure about how shoestring this operation seems to be. And why Cynthia didn't mention it at any point. You're pretty sure you referred to a "manufacturing plant" a few times...shouldn't she have corrected your assumptions?

A woman pops her head out of a window of the house. "Cindy, will your friends be staying for dinner?"

"They're coworkers, not friends, Mom!" Cindy calls, then blushes and turns to you and Roger. "Um, sorry, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Uh, do you want to stay for dinner?"

"That's your mom?" Roger asks, extending an accusing finger towards the house.

"Well...yeah," Cynthia says. "Kaplan is my maiden name. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I didn't think you'd give it a shot otherwise. My dad's had trouble finding work, but you see what a great job he can do!"

"I really wish you had told me up front," you say. You really wish you hadn't brought Roger along, either; though perhaps it's for the best. If you'd tried to cover this up, it would be sure to get out one way or another. At least with Roger here, you won't be tempted. "I'm going to have to tell our boss about this, you know." Maybe, if he's feeling generous, he'll at least let you keep moving forward on these coasters; otherwise, you'll show a huge loss for the quarter, as it's too late to switch to a different project, and you've invested quite a bit of time and money into the prototyping phase of the coasters. Either way, Cynthia's sure to be fired, and you're pretty sure Jamie's going to get the coveted Winter Olympics project. Frankly, you hope _you_  don't end up fired.

"I'm making beef stroganoff with German chocolate cake for dessert," calls Cynthia's mom, who is too far away to hear your conversation.

Well, if you're going to get fired, at least you can do it on a stomach full of German chocolate cake. "Yes, we'll be staying. Thank you, Mrs. Kaplan!"

"Please, call me Millie," she calls, and shuts the window. Cynthia looks like she's about to cry, while Dex has gone back into his shed—you can hear the scroll saw. Roger sticks his hands in his pockets and whistles, much more lighthearted than you feel. This is going to be the most awkward dinner of your life.

THE END


End file.
